Automotive and vehicle manufacturers today are striving to contain and/or reduce costs and meet global competition. In order to meet these goals, the automotive and vehicle manufacturers have tried various solutions. These solutions include reducing the mass and thus weight of the vehicles where possible or appropriate, reducing the number of individual and component parts of a vehicle, incorporating new manufacturing techniques, substituting different materials, particularly lighter weight materials, redesigning parts to reduce their weight, down-sizing the vehicle for its individual components, and applying design techniques that result in more efficient structures and use of materials. One of these design techniques also involves improving the aerodynamics of the vehicle and thus reducing their drag. Various improvements have also been made in vehicle engines and powertrain technology which are directed to meeting fuel economy standards.
The majority of parts for most vehicles are made from steel materials. Steel has many proven advantages, such as low cost, excellent manufacturability, recyclability, and crash energy management capability. The redesign of steel parts and the ability to make the parts from various types, gauges, and strengths of steel materials, have helped create automobiles and vehicles having lower overall vehicle weight.
The body shell of a vehicle (a/k/a "body-in-white") is the skeletal structure to which various subsystems subsequently are attached. These subsystems include the engine and drivetrain, suspension and wheels, interior components, and exterior body components, such as doors, glass, hood, and trunk lid. Since the body-in-white (BIW) typically represents approximately 20-25% of the total weight of a vehicle, efforts have been made to reduce the weight of the BIW. Any reductions in weight or use of different structures and materials, however, have to be done in cooperation with meeting various structural, rigidity, and dimensional parameters in order to produce a satisfactory vehicle.
It is an object of the present invention to provide improved vehicle structures (especially BIWs) for sport utility vehicles (SUV) and light truck vehicles. It is another object of the present invention to provide improved structural and operational components for such vehicle structures.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide vehicle structures for SUVs and light trucks which utilize a plurality of common components and thus which are less expensive to manufacture and assemble. At the same time, it is still another object of the present invention to provide improved structures and utilize common components while at the same time maintaining satisfactory performance characteristics of the vehicles.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a vehicle structure which has fewer and more standard components than known structures and which still has satisfactory performance characteristics which meet or exceed vehicles of the same type known today. It is another object of the present invention to provide SUV and light truck structures which have less mass and which are improvements over known structures and still meet requisite standards of structural integrity, crash worthiness and durability.
These and other objects, purposes and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description thereof, when viewed in accordance with the attached drawings and appended claims.